


When All The Worst We Fear Lets Fall It's Weight

by Casual_Scribbles



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Lucretia does bookbinding, forgetting things is Not Fun, lucretia loves them though and wants to help, she makes them notebooks, the crew has ptsd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-25 02:36:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22328548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Casual_Scribbles/pseuds/Casual_Scribbles
Summary: The IPRE has a bad history with forgetting things. It's no wonder simple forgetfulness has them falling apart. Lucretia wants to help.-Lucretia makes notebooks for her family.
Relationships: Barry Bluejeans & Magnus Burnsides & Davenport & Merle Highchurch & Lucretia & Lup & Taako, The Director | Lucretia & Everyone, The Director | Lucretia & IPRE Crew | Starblaster Crew, The Director | Lucretia & Lup, The Director | Lucretia & Merle Highchurch, The Director | Lucretia & Taako, lucretia &
Comments: 5
Kudos: 65





	When All The Worst We Fear Lets Fall It's Weight

Lucretia made notebooks for her family. They aren’t Candlenights gifts; Candlenights isn’t for several more months. None of the crew have birthdays coming up. She's not giving them to her family to beg for forgiveness, no that's not how forgiveness works. You have to earn forgiveness, you can’t _bribe_ someone to forgive you, that’s not _real._ No, this is because on at least three separate occasions she’s seen members of her family have panic attacks. Taako's, Barry's, and Davenport's are the worst ones. She's seen Taako following Lup around like a shadow after he forgot how much sugar he needed for a recipe and broke down crying for three hours. She's seen Barry unusually quiet after forgetting his place in a book, the only indication that he's losing himself being the white-knuckled grip he has on Lup's hand.

The worst one by far is Davenport. She'll never forget the chill that gripped her spine when she was startled out of sleep by a desperate voice crackling out of her Stone of Farspeech. “Lucretia? Is this Lucretia? Do I have the frequency right?”

She’d scrambled to grab it from her table, wondering what – _what_ – could be wrong now. Now that everyone was finally together and everyone was home and everyone was _safe._ “Yes, this is Lucretia. Who's calling?”

“This is- uh- this is Orla and I'm- I sail with Davenport and something's wrong.” Lucretia's heart stopped. “We were just playing cards and he just- He’s freaking out and he's only saying his name but he wrote down your name and frequency and he pointed to it so I called you and- I don’t- I don’t know what to do-”

Sure enough, she could hear him in the background, a shaking, insistent, “Davenport, Davenport, _Davenport_.” It took all of Lucretia's willpower to keep her voice steady. She gave Orla her coordinates and instructed her to bring Davenport to her. It took an hour and a half, which Lucretia used to set up the guest room with Davenport's favorite books and a weighted blanket that she keeps around for these kinds of situations.

The moment the ship touched the dock Davenport launched himself across the yard and Lucretia just barely had time to bend down so that she could wrap him in her arms instead of having him crash into her legs. He was shaking – he was shaking so badly – and it felt so _wrong_ that her powerful Captain was reduced to a wreck in her arms. She was the youngest of the crew before Wonderland, technically still is if they don’t count the years the liches stole from her, but here she was comforting Davenport as if _he_ were the child. She had done this to him, though. She had to help him.

She thanked Orla, carried him inside, and wrapped him carefully in a weighted blanket. She sat in his room that night, reading to him while he gripped her hand and muttered his name under his breath. It took days for him to say anything other than his name (He'd looked up at her, his eyes tired but more lucid than he'd been since he got here. “Lucretia,” His voice was quiet. She knew it was a ‘thank you', but she didn’t think she deserved to accept it) and weeks for him to get his full vocabulary back.

He had forgotten the order of cards.

She knows the others are struggling as well. She's lost track of the number of times Magnus's heavy footsteps have rushed to her room, only to pause just outside her door for a moment before turning away. She’s seen Merle slip silently into his plant room and stay in there for hours. She's seen Lup huddled under a weighted blanket with a steaming cup of tea in her hands and Barry and Taako pressed in on either side of her.

She had picked up bookbinding because it helped her to have something to do with her hands, but her words always seemed to dry up when she needed them most. She learned to make notebooks until her words started flowing again and she could write her thoughts down. So, she made them notebooks. She figured if they had something to write in to keep track of things they forgot, then it might help them. She hoped it would help, at least.

For Taako, she made a purple leather-bound notebook with lined pages. Engraved in the leather with gold-leaf lines are the words, “Kiss The Cook; He's Very Gay.”

For Barry, she made a plain brown leather notebook with grid-lined pages. The cover is decorated with an anatomical etching of a heart – complete with labels.

For Davenport, she made a leather journal that wrapped around the pages, effectively water-proofing it. The pages are dotted and the cover has an etching of a ship and a lighthouse.

For Lup, she made a fiery red journal with empty pages, guessing she would prefer to let her handwriting go wherever it wants. The pages are perforated, easily torn out. The cover is engraved with the words “therapeutic pyromania.”

For Magnus, she made a leather-bound journal with light grid lines to keep his thoughts organized, and so he could use them as guidelines for blueprints if he chose to.

For Merle she made a green notebook with lined pages, the cover etched with flowering plants.

She prays they'll like them, watches with clenched fingers as they pull the paper from their books and regard them. Magnus lights up and Lucretia breathes a sigh of relief. Even if only Magnus likes his, that would be enough.

But her worry seems to be for nothing. Lup cackles, showing her book off to Barry, who is excitedly tracing the lines of the heart. Merle smiles softly at his. Davenport looks like he’s going to cry.

Taako, though. Taako just frowns at his. She can’t help the tug at her heart, even though she hadn't expected anything else. Even though she'd expected worse. She offers him a weak smile. He doesn't look at her, simply tucks it under his arm and retreats to his room. The rest of the crew thank her for the books and they all go back to their business.

She finds Barry flipping through notes in his, sees that the first several pages are a transcription of his magic coin, the rest are notes on necromantic spells and cases from reaper business.

Lup keeps hers as a journal, most pages filled. As she passes by Lup while she writing, she notices a few pages missing and realizes what Lup had been doing outside with a fire at three a.m.

Magnus asks her to check his work on a blueprint in his and she consciously fights back tears through a smile.

She sees Merle carrying his into the plant room.

Davenport's seems to be a bit of a mess. She’d seen the first several pages while helping him through a panic attack. He'd asked her to read it aloud to him. It'd been his name, followed by his birth date, followed by the names of the IPRE crew, followed by several facts about himself – his parents' names, the town he grew up in, what school he went to, and so on. Other pages were just line after line of the words “I’m Davenport,” scrawled shakily across the page. Most pages were just a normal captain's log.

She never sees Taako write in his. She assumes he's thrown it out and is a little disappointed but ultimately not surprised. She hasn’t earned that from him yet.

But then she’s cleaning up the living room on day after game night and finds his journal amidst a stack of books. She assumes they're his – though she knows he'll deny that and claim he's just holding onto them for Angus – and starts to carry them down the hall to his room. But someone must've moved the carpet because she trips over the raised edge and the books tumble out of her arms. As they fall, Taako's journal falls open and she sees his eccentric, looping handwriting scrawling across the pages. She doesn’t read it – no she respects her family’s privacy, hasn’t intentionally read through their journals without invitation – and instead snaps it closed and gathers it up with the rest of the books, but she recognized Lup's name several times.

She’s fighting tears of some unidentified emotion as she knocks on Taako's door. She can only dump the stack of books in his arm before turning and locking herself in her own room before he can see her cry. She doesn't want him knowing that she saw the journal, doesn't want him thinking that she read what he wrote. For her, it’s just enough knowing that he used her journal at all – that he still _has_ it. She sinks to the floor in her room, tears streaming down her cheeks and laughter bubbling from her chest.


End file.
